Beauty Sleep

by Cameron Dokey

  Not because he was so obviously not charming, but because he so obviously was.

  I think it was right around this time that my nurse began to tell me bedtime stories featuring the adventures of various leopards who tried to change their spots. Unsuccessfully, I hardly need add.

  Oswald had better luck. So much better that, before too long, everyone at court forgot that his nickname had originally been a cruel joke. Now the nobles called him Prince Charming because that’s what they thought he actually was. Maman remained unconvinced. What Papa thought, he kept to himself. Chances are good I would have followed my mother’s lead, had it not been for one thing:

  It was Charming Oswald (as I preferred to call him) who finally convinced my mother to turn me loose in the great outdoors.

  For years Maman had argued (with success) that the best way to hold the spells that threatened me at bay was to keep me indoors, as far away from unexpected things as possible. It was true that I wouldn’t be able to engage in any of the more traditional forms of princesslike activities, including the thing at which she excelled: painstakingly boring embroidery. But there were other ladylike tasks I might pursue, such as painting bowls of fruit or braiding rugs to set before the fire.

  No matter how many times I ate the fruit instead of painting it, usually getting juice all down my front, and no matter how many times my rugs contained gigantic and mischievous bumps that threatened to send anyone foolish enough to tread upon them hurtling headlong into the fire, Maman insisted that indoors was safer than out. For me, at any rate. There were simply too many surprises out of doors. And after all, as she was fond of saying, usually as a way to end one of our inevitable arguments, even a simple stick, properly wielded, is capable of drawing one bright drop of blood.

  In vain did I vehemently protest and my father gently suggest that she was being just a tad over-protective. The spells spoken over me in my cradle weren’t supposed to be fulfilled until I was sixteen years old. Couldn’t I at least go out from time to time till then? Well-supervised, of course.

  Her answer was always the same: No. No. A thousand times, no. And that was the way things stood, until Oswald managed his amazing transformation and became genuinely charming. And no sooner had he completed one transformation, than he performed another: He changed my mother’s mind.

  “Well,” he said one day, a particularly fine one, as I recall. So fine it had provoked an unusually impassioned plea on my part to be let out, and an equally impassioned denial from Maman.

  All this happened shortly after lunch. We were in my mother’s solar, a bright room at the top of the tallest tower, the room in which we always sat when the weather was fine. The fruit that had not been consumed at luncheon was now arranged into an improbably artistic pile and prominently displayed in a dish on a sideboard. My paints and easel stood nearby. Maman glanced significantly at them both from time to time, while her fingers worked her current piece of embroidery.

  I wasn’t about to do what she wanted, of course. Instead, I sat on the windowseat beside my father and tried my best not to pout. Not that I held back from this as a rule, but I did not want to pout in front of Oswald. My father reached over and tousled my hair in an attempt to cheer me up.

  “Really, Philippe,” Maman protested at once. “You’ll make her all mussy, and she does that often enough all by herself. You were saying?” she asked, switching her attention back to Oswald. Not that she really wanted to know what he would say, but giving him her attention was an excellent way to show she was put out with me and Papa.

  “I was saying that I’m sure you know best, Aunt Mathilde,” Oswald said with an engaging smile. He really was astonishingly handsome, particularly when he smiled, a thing I may have neglected to mention before. His hair was everyday enough: dark brown. But his eyes were gray and flecked with gold. Like the ocean on a stormy day when the sun breaks through and flashes across the surface of the water for just a moment. When you looked at Oswald, you didn’t want to look away. There was a thing about him that captured you and wouldn’t let go.

  At the moment, he was standing in front of the fireplace on what was, perhaps, the most unfortunate of all my rugs. Fortunately for him, there was no fire, as the day was so warm and fine.

  “I refer, of course, to the matter of Aurore being allowed to go outside,” he went on. “I might pursue a different course, if she were my child.” Here a look of horror crossed his face, as if he realized he might have gone too far, and his words broke off.

  “What different course?” my mother demanded at once.

  A thing that might seem strange, on the face of it, considering she disliked Charming Oswald. But she disliked the thought that he might have considered something she hadn’t even more. (A thing I’m absolutely certain Oswald knew quite well. My cousin was many different things, but stupid wasn’t one of them.)

  “It’s just that it occurs to me,” he said. He paused to flick an imaginary piece of lint from his sleeve and Maman leaned forward as if spellbound. “If Aurore’s activities were more… varied, she might actually be safer in the long run. Naturally, as her mother, you would not notice such a thing yourself, but the truth is—”

  Here he paused again, this time to poke at the biggest lump in the rug with the toe of one perfectly-polished boot. “The truth is that Aurore can be rather clumsy at times.” He raised those strange eyes to mine, the gold in them shimmering with mischief. “No offense, cousin.”

  I bared my teeth, wishing I could sink them into his leg. I might have been only eight, but I could tell that he was up to something. Usually this resulted in me being in trouble.

  “None taken, cousin.”

  “Of course I know she is clumsy,” my mother snapped, at which my father made a sound. “Surely that is all the more reason to keep her indoors.”

  “Well, yes,” Oswald said slowly, this time paying great attention to the little finger of his right hand on which he wore the signet ring that had once belonged to his father. “If you say so. That is one way of looking at it, I suppose. But surely you’d hate for her to grow up ignorant as well. Anyone may be either clumsy or stupid by birth, but it’s really too bad for a person to be both things at once. Unless they simply can’t help it, of course.”

  My mother’s eyes narrowed and I held my breath. Of all the signs that my mother was becoming angry, this was the most dangerous one. The one most likely to result in an explosion. Beside me on the windowseat, I could tell that Papa was holding his breath, too.

  “Are you trying to say that my daughter is a dullard by birth or that I am raising her to be so?” Maman demanded softly.

  “Oh, my dear Aunt Mathilde!” Oswald exclaimed, his expression horrified. He moved to her swiftly and got down before her on one knee. “Now it is I who have been dull and clumsy, for I have failed to make you see my point. I only meant that the more of the world Aurore knows, the less chance it will have to surprise her. For isn’t that what we all fear the most? That her fate will take her unawares, and so overcome her?”

  “C’est exact. That is so,” spoke up my father.

  “Well,” my mother sniffed, with a sharp glance in his direction. “If you’re going to take his side…”

  “But surely it is not a question of sides,” Oswald protested, at his most sincere and charming. “It is only a question of what is best for Aurore.”

  A silence fell as we all looked at my mother. I could see her turning Oswald’s words over and over in her mind, the way a fast-moving stream tumbles a stone. Seeking out the rough places, scouring them smooth.

  “You think that Aurore will be safer if she is allowed to go outdoors.”

  “I do,” Oswald answered promptly. “Children are curious, Aunt Mathilde. They mean no disrespect to their elders in this. It is simply the way they are. Since this is so, why not let Aurore indulge her curiosity? Let her go outside if that is what she desires. If you don’t, she’ll only find ways to get into trouble where she is.”

&nbs
p; And it was this argument, so undeniably true, that finally won my mother over and changed her mind.

  “Very well,” she said at last. “Aurore may go out as long as she stays within the palace walls. But I really must insist…”

  I never did hear what it was she wanted to insist I do. Or not do, more likely. Because by then I was off and running, out the door and down the long curving staircase that lead from the solar to the great hall. Across the hall and through a side door I knew led to the kitchens, though I had never been allowed to spend more than a few stolen moments there (too many sharp objects such as skewers and knives).

  And then, finally, there it was: the great oak door that lead from the kitchen itself into the kitchen garden. As it was a sunny day and the kitchen was warm, the door was standing wide open. Through it, I could see the sunshine running over the garden like honey. For as long as I could remember, I had wanted to walk through this door. To pull radishes and carrots as I had seen the gardeners do from my bedroom window. To eat them with the dirt still clinging to them, not even pausing to wash them off.

  A pretty mundane place to want to begin my exploration of the great wide world, you may be thinking.

  I can only say, with all due respect, that you would be wrong. There can be no better place to begin your exploration of the world than by stepping out your own back door.

  The kitchen staff was well familiar with my longing to go out into the garden. They also knew it was forbidden, a thing that had always made them shake their heads and cluck their tongues. As I edged toward the doorway I heard Cook’s voice say,

  “You’d best stop right there, now, Princess Aurore. You know how your lady mother feels about you going outside.”

  “It’s all right,” an unexpected voice said. “Let her go.” I jumped, for the voice was Oswald’s. “Madame la Reine has changed her mind,” he explained. “From now on, the princess Aurore may go into the garden.”

  At this, a spontaneous cheer swept through the kitchen, and I shot through the open door as if fired from a slingshot. I was so eager to explore everything at once, I ended up standing stock-still instead, simply inhaling the heavily scented air of the garden.

  A thousand smells seemed to rush toward me at once, as eager to welcome me as I was to be among them. That one was rosemary, with its medicinal tang as sharp and pointed as its dark and shiny leaves. This, the musty pungence of oregano and thyme. Beneath them was a thick, rich smell that I imagined must be the earth itself. A scent that seemed to me to be the same as its colors, green and brown.

  And over everything there lay a scent so sweet it made my head spin. Later I learned it was orange blossom. Just being able to stand in the sun and breathe it all in made me want to run around in circles and be still as a stone at the same time.

  Though in the years that followed I went farther and farther afield, farther than I could dream was possible at that moment, in those first seconds of freedom, I had everything I’d ever craved. The kitchen garden was world and free enough.

  When I finally did begin to move about, so engrossed did I become that it took me some time to realize that Oswald had followed and was watching from the arch of the open kitchen door. And there was in his face a thing for which I have no name even now, after all the years that have come and gone.

  “Cousin, come and look at this!” I cried. And so he moved to kneel beside me in the garden, not caring that his perfect clothes got dirty in the process, a thing that, until that moment, I hadn’t even noticed about mine.

  I had found a plant whose leaves were pointed on both ends and broad in the middle. Bumpy top and bottom, colored green and purple all at once. I rubbed them, sniffing my fingers and Oswald followed suit.

  “That is sage, Aurore.”

  “Sage,” I breathed. A word I knew meant wise. “Do all the names of plants describe the hearts of men, then?” I asked.

  And Oswald answered, “No, not very often. I think you’ve found the only one. Beginner’s luck.”

  I pointed to a plant with leaves as green as spring itself, long and pointed as the tips of spears. “What is that?”

  “That is tarragon.”

  Twice more I pointed, and both times, he knew the answers. “You know them,” I said, and even I could hear my voice was filled with awe. “You know them all.”

  “No,” Oswald said. “Not all, just some. If you want to know them all, we must get the head gardener for that.”

  I gave him a sidelong glance. “Or perhaps the gardener’s lovely daughter.”

  Her name was Jessica. I’d seen her from my window and knew she was every bit as beautiful as her father’s garden. Her hair was the rich dark color of the fertile soil. Her eyes were as green as the first leaves of springtime. I’d heard Nurse and my mother’s lady’s maid clucking their tongues over her and Oswald. He had his eye on her, they said. I wasn’t sure what that meant, but it sounded suspicious.

  Oswald reached out and tweaked the end of my braid which had, of course, begun to come undone.

  “Very well,” neatly calling my bluff. “Shall we call her?”

  “Not today,” I said swiftly. “Tomorrow.” For tomorrow would be different. Still wonderful, yes. But not filled with this same wonder. You don’t have to be a grown up to understand the way things change. To understand that a thing can be truly new only once, and precious because it came to you when you did not look for it.

  “Today, tell me what you know. Please, Charming Oswald.”

  This time, he gave my hair a tug. “I hate it when you call me that.”

  “I know.”

  At that, the thing in his face for which I’d had no name became a thing I recognized, and that thing was a smile. “Just for today,” I begged. “I won’t ask again.”

  “Of course you will,” he contradicted. “You’re always asking for impossible things, Aurore. It’s one of the very few things I like about you.”

  I sat back, intrigued.”Why?”

  He was silent for so long I thought he would not answer, but finally he replied.”I guess because I want impossible things too, only I have never dared to ask for mine aloud.”

  “It doesn’t do much good,” I said, surprised to discover that I was drawn to console him. “I never get any of the things I ask for.”

  “You did today,” said Oswald.

  “Because of you,” I answered. “Thank you, Charming Cousin.”

  At this I could tell that, for perhaps the first time in our lives together, I had surprised him. Pleasantly, I mean.

  “You are welcome, ma petite Aurore. Very well, just for today then. I will tell you what I know. But don’t expect me to be so nice to you everyday.”

  “Don’t worry,” I said.”I won’t.”

  At this, Oswald laughed and stood, not even bothering to brush off his dirty knees. He extended one hand down. I reached up to take it. He wrapped his fingers around mine in a grip that was at once gentle and strong, and together we set off to explore the rest of the garden.

  Though things between us would never be simple, there was a change from that moment on. He no longer tormented me quite so much, nor made quite so many mentions of my inevitable untimely end. And I no longer pointed out to him that, though he was my father’s heir, he was still his second choice.

  And there were many who remarked upon the fact that, when I discovered some new thing that I wanted explained or simply wished to share, I took my treasure first not to Papa or Maman, or even to my nurse, but to my cousin. And they remarked also that, whatever he might be doing, Oswald excused himself from it at once and remained with me until I had all the answers I wanted.

  Whatever would come between us, sooner or later, nothing would ever be able to erase the thing that had been that day engraved upon my heart: It was Oswald who had won for me my freedom, the thing that I desired most.

  And in doing this, he also brought about the third and last of his amazing transformations, for such things always come in threes, as you m
ust know.

  First, he changed himself. Second, he changed my mother’s mind. And, finally, with my first step out of doors, he changed the inside of me, for he rewove the very fabric of my heart.

  It still beat with a trip and a hammer, for that is the way a heart must go. But, whereas before it had woven only dark things when it dwelled upon my cousin, now within the fabric of my heart there ran, for him and him alone, one single strand of pure, untarnishable gold.

  FOUR

  The years that followed were the happiest of my life. Though I suppose I should say, the happiest until now. But the now that has but so lately come to pass was then so far away as to be almost invisible. The thinnest wisp of white cloud in a sky the same color blue as Maman’s favorite china cups. I couldn’t yet even imagine that now would ever be.

  So I’ll say it again:

  The years that followed were the happiest of my life.

  Oh, I still did plenty of things I didn’t particularly want to, such as painting trees and wildflowers, for instance. Though even I had to admit this was an improvement over the never-ending parade of fruit still lifes. And there was one area in which as far as I was concerned Maman took Oswald’s words a bit too much to heart. She now insisted that I learn to embroider, reasoning that the more familiar I was with my needle the less likely I would be to jab myself and so draw one bright drop of blood.

  But, on the whole, things were so much better there is really no comparison.

  Except for the nightmare, of course.

  I suppose I should have expected there would be a price to pay for my newly acquired freedom. But I didn’t. You don’t really stop to consider these things when you’re only ten years old. I didn’t yet perceive the way everything that happens is connected— didn’t realize that opening a door that led to outside exploration would inevitably open a door to the unexplored places inside myself.

  And, just as exploring the outside world brought new words to my vocabulary (hyacinth, chamomile, mugwort), so did exploring my inner world give me new terms to ponder. Fear, confusion, and ambiguity above all else. For, though I had certainly heard these words before, I didn’t truly understand them until the nightmare began.